When Texas jail requirements push inmates to lockups in different states, oversight doesn’t observe

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HOUSTON — The Kinner & Stevens Funeral Residence wouldn’t open for hours, so Sarah Knight sat within the car parking zone with one thought consuming her: The physique inside was not her son’s.

Nothing in regards to the 1 a.m. cellphone name from the Harris County Sheriff’s Workplace made sense. Jaleen Anderson was nonetheless awaiting his day in court docket on a felony drug possession cost when he was shipped to a Louisiana jail as a result of Harris County Jail didn’t have room for him. After which for the wholesome 29-year-old to only abruptly die behind bars? That was even tougher to understand.

However when the Louisiana coroner and funeral dwelling director unzipped the physique bag, Knight’s worst concern grew to become actual.

“I asked God to bring him back to me,” she stated, recounting the second she noticed her son’s physique within the Jena, Louisiana funeral dwelling 268 miles from their dwelling in Houston’s Kashmere Gardens. “I said, ‘This was an untimely death. He had no business dying at this age.’”

On April 3, Anderson was amongst tons of of Texans accused of crimes — and nonetheless legally presumed harmless — sitting behind bars in different states. As an rising variety of Texas jails face overcrowding and understaffing, increasingly more individuals with prison expenses are being shuffled to different lock-ups whereas they await the decision of their instances.

And whereas state jail requirements meant to guard individuals awaiting trial partially led Harris County to ship Anderson to LaSalle Correctional Heart, Texas jail officers’ oversight of circumstances inside lock-ups doesn’t cross state strains.

Within the months since Anderson’s demise, his mom has been on two missions. First, Knight has pushed Louisiana officers and leaders on the jail the place Anderson died for solutions about whether or not her son bought the medical consideration he wanted after he started having seizures. And at public conferences from Houston to Austin, she’s implored county officers and state leaders to cease delivery Texans defending themselves towards prison expenses to out-of-state lockups.

To date, she’s made little headway.

“What are you going to do to prevent this from happening again?” Knight requested state leaders throughout an August public assembly. “Jaleen is not the first person that has lost his life and if you all don’t stop sending our loved ones to these facilities, he will not be the last.”

LaSalle Correctional Heart warden John Stuckey, when reached by cellphone, declined to reply questions on Anderson and directed inquiries to a spokesperson. The corporate didn’t reply to an inventory of written questions.

A Harris County spokesperson stated the investigation into Anderson’s demise is ongoing, the post-mortem will not be full and the medical expert has not but decided the reason for demise.

Louisiana’s jail requirements are significantly weaker than Texas.’ A 2023 report that Louisiana officers requested discovered there isn’t a oversight mechanism for the state’s minimal jail requirements, which lack element and aren’t recurrently up to date. Louisiana doesn’t require services to report deaths in custody to the state’s lawyer common, not like in Texas. The report offered suggestions for brand spanking new insurance policies, together with requiring an impartial investigation of deaths-in-custody and an evaluation of the standard of medical care offered to inmates who die. However the lawmakers there up to now haven’t enacted them.

Through the current assembly the place Knight testified, Duane Lock, one in all 9 individuals Gov. Greg Abbott appointed to the Texas Fee on Jail Requirements, criticized the truth that Texas officers haven’t any express oversight of out-of-state services, even when the state’s prison defendants are despatched there.

“Is this something that needs to be moved to the Legislature?” Lock stated. “Because I have some fundamental concerns about someone who, through no fault of their own, might end up in the hands of someone who might mistreat them.”

For years, LaSalle Corrections has been below fireplace for claims of medical neglect. Greater than 100 lawsuits have been filed towards the Louisiana firm saying that it didn’t present satisfactory medical care, Truthout reported in 2022.

Final yr, LaSalle Corrections agreed to pay a $7 million authorized settlement after a Texas lady died in a Texarkana jail whereas it was operated by LaSalle. The federal lawsuit stated that corrections workers ignored the lady’s worsening well being and took her to the hospital when it was too late.

Harris County’s contract with LaSalle states that the non-public facility should adhere to Louisiana’s “best practices,” however the non-public facility will not be required to fulfill Texas’ minimal jail requirements.

“There aren’t a lot of five-star rated jails out there,” stated Jason Spencer, chief of workers on the Harris County Sheriff’s Workplace. “I don’t think you’ll find a jail that people will say, ‘Yeah, that’s a great one.’ It’s not a place people want to be. But if there were significant red flags, that’s obviously something we’ll have to look at.”

A younger man with a plan

Jaleen Anderson loved boxing and performing again flips. And regardless of his quick stature, he might dunk a basketball. He labored in warehouses and on meeting strains, and he appeared ahead to returning to work on his launch from jail.

In October 2023, he was arrested and charged with a second-degree felony for possession of 9.2 grams of methamphetamine. Knight paid a bail bond firm to maintain him out of jail. However then he was re-arrested in March 2024 for possessing an unspecified quantity between 4 and 200 grams of methamphetamine. This time, a decide denied Anderson bail.

Knight isn’t satisfied the medicine have been Anderson’s the primary time he was arrested. The second time, she suspects he was promoting narcotics to assist his household as a result of the primary arrest made it tough for him to discover a job.

Whereas in Harris County Jail, Anderson determined he by no means wished to be locked up once more, relations stated. He talked about getting a job as a meals supply driver or turning into a barber like his dad. His earlier jobs had solely paid him about $2,300 a month, an affidavit states. He wished to extend his earnings to assist his youngsters, and the one that might be born in October.

“He wasn’t a young man without a plan,” Knight stated.

On March 22, Knight was stunned she hadn’t obtained a cellphone or video name from her son within the Harris County Jail. She often heard from him daily. When she referred to as the jail, she was shocked to study Anderson was on the best way to Louisiana.

Neither Anderson’s relations nor his court-appointed lawyer have been advised he could be moved. Anderson had no say within the matter.

The following day, Knight spoke with him after he’d arrived at LaSalle.

Anderson’s subsequent court docket date was scheduled for April 23. He appeared ahead to the listening to as a result of he hoped to get out of jail on probation and transfer ahead together with his life.

As a substitute, Anderson was pronounced useless at 8:59 p.m. on April 3 on the Hardtner Medical Heart Emergency Room. That hospital sits lower than a mile from LaSalle Correctional Heart, the northeast Louisiana facility that homes as much as 650 Harris County jail inmates.

When Anderson had arrived on the hospital, his coronary heart was not beating. Medical doctors tried to revive him. They carried out CPR, intubated him, and administered epinephrine three separate occasions. For a second, he had a pulse once more. But it surely shortly disappeared. Code was referred to as: cardiac arrest.

Earlier than transferring him to LaSalle, well being workers at Harris County Jail reviewed Anderson’s medical report and located that he didn’t have any important medical circumstances or wants, in line with a spokesperson.

However in LaSalle, Anderson skilled a number of seizures, in line with medical information his household shared with The Texas Tribune. After experiencing two seizures, Anderson was moved from the final inhabitants to a one-person cell, the place corrections officers might extra carefully watch him and reply to a medical emergency, Anderson’s relations stated. The following day — the day of his demise — Anderson was seen for a neurological evaluation on the jail, information state. The outcomes of the evaluation weren’t offered. Anderson suffered 4 extra seizures, together with one which lasted at the very least 10 minutes.

Harris County’s contract with LaSalle stipulates that the Louisiana jail should have on-site medical and well being care protection obtainable 24 hours a day, seven days every week. Well being care suppliers have to be CPR licensed, and the ability has to have exterior defibrillators, units that can be utilized to deal with an individual whose coronary heart has stopped working.

Following studies of assaults towards inmates at out-of-state services, Harris County despatched compliance groups to examine LaSalle in addition to the Mississippi jail that homes Harris County inmates, Chief Deputy Mike Lee stated at a Feb. public assembly. Primarily based on an inspection report, LaSalle’s well being clinic is “well-equipped.”

Nonetheless, it isn’t clear if medical personnel at LaSalle intervened whereas Anderson skilled seizures.

“After the second seizure, don’t you think they should have called EMS?” stated Harold Anderson Jr., Anderson’s father. “They gave up and just let my son die.”

A mom seeks solutions as jail deaths rise

Knight immigrated from Mexico Metropolis in 1982, when she was 8 years previous. She began a church in her neighborhood in northeast Houston and serves because the pastor there. Her voice is of course robust, her tone agency.

Simply weeks after her son died — and on the identical day he had been slated to look earlier than a decide on his prison expenses — Knight stood earlier than the Harris County Commissioners Court docket. Her voice trembled as she described her ache and the little she had gathered about Anderson’s demise.

Commissioners provided condolences and promised to get her solutions about Anderson’s demise.

“I really don’t think we should be OK with these deaths,” stated Harris County Choose Lina Hidalgo, a Democrat who presides over the commissioners court docket. “Committing a crime pretrial is not a death sentence.”

Minutes later, commissioners agreed to spend one other $3.1 million to ship the county’s jailed defendants to LaSalle.

Knight stated it was a slap within the face.

“I want to see that place bulldozed,” she later advised The Texas Tribune in an interview. “The only thing that will give me peace is that this facility closes down.”

Jail deaths happen all over the place, not simply in non-public services like LaSalle. And they’re on the rise. Nationally, the 2019 jail mortality fee was 167 deaths per 100,000 inmates, an 11% improve since 2000, a federal report discovered.

This yr alone, jail inmates have died in each rural and concrete Texas counties, together with Tarrant, Harris, and Bexar. On June 10, U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Value, despatched a letter to the Division of Justice urging them to launch an investigation into the “distressing pattern of inmate deaths and jail incidents” at Fort Value’s Tarrant County Jail.

Households of 9 individuals who died in Harris County Jail are suing native officers there. The FBI can be conducting a civil rights investigation over deaths within the Harris County Jail.

Harris County has been sending inmates to Louisiana on and off since at the very least 2008 and now spends upwards of $50 million a yr on outsourcing. The overwhelming majority of its inmates are awaiting trial and are legally presumed harmless.

Texas legislation requires the reporting and investigation of deaths of individuals in jails or prisons inside the state. These necessities don’t apply to inmates who die out-of-state.

“We have no oversight once a county makes a contract with another state,” stated Ricky Armstrong, TCJS’ assistant director. “It’s up to that state to follow the rules.”

That makes it tough for anybody to uncover what goes on in services throughout state strains. In 2022, Harris County inmate Billie Davis died whereas at LaSalle Correctional Heart — the identical place the place Anderson was despatched. It wasn’t till a yr had handed that jail advocates lastly managed to trace down a coroner’s report from Louisiana and located that Davis’ demise was dominated a murder. That demise will not be counted in a Texas lawyer common database that might have included it if Davis died in a lockup inside the state.

The TCJS additionally doesn’t depend out-of-state deaths of their jail deaths database, stated Krish Gundu, co-founder of the Texas Jail Mission, which advocates for jail inmates. For 3 years, Gundu says, she has been making an attempt to persuade the fee to call out-of-state jail deaths on their month-to-month report.

“I have an email thread asking to count this man, count this man, count this man,” stated Gundu who additionally sits on the fee’s administrative guidelines advisory committee, which mentioned the difficulty at a gathering final week.

Commissioner Lock, one of many state jail commissioners, requested counties this month to exhaust all potential choices earlier than they begin sending individuals out of state, a apply Harris County stated they’re already following. Lock additionally needs the variety of Texas inmates despatched out of state to drop by November.

Neither of these issues will do a lot for Knight or her quest to know what occurred to her son.

Lower than two weeks after Harris County officers elevated the quantity it pays LaSalle to accommodate their inmates, Knight visited the Texas capitol to testify earlier than TCJS commissioners, the place she demanded accountability.

“I am here to seek justice and I need answers,” Knight stated. “I am demanding surveillance footage from the last three days of his life.” Knight has but to obtain the footage or the post-mortem report.

“He died by himself,” Knight continued as tears rolled down her face. “His mother and father could not hold his hand. No one called me … I need peace.”

Anderson’s gravesite birthday

On Might 13, the day Anderson would have turned 30, Knight rounded up her Houston household to rejoice his birthday at his gravesite. His youngsters, nieces and nephews made a birthday card out of enormous development paper. They wrote notes in purple marker about how a lot they’d miss their father and uncle.

At one level, a deluge of rain got here down. However Knight had come ready with a tent. A pure matriarch, Knight continued along with her agenda, laying a variety of sandwiches, chips and drinks.

She referred to as upon every particular person to say a form phrase about Anderson.

“He didn’t have a hateful bone in his body,” stated Roy Lewis, Knight’s associate.

“He protected all of us,” stated Fabian Callis, Anderson’s older brother.

Knight then led the household in a spherical of Completely happy Birthday and vowed to maintain combating for solutions.

“We will continue to seek justice for you and for others who went through what you went through,” Knight stated. “My son is a vessel, and he is here to teach people a lesson.”

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